According to Montgomery County police, a makeshift bomb was discovered inside the Discovery Communications Building, ABC 7 reports. It consisted of two small propane canisters similar to those used for camping. It was wrapped with piping that contained shot gun pellets. If it had gone off, it would have acted similar to a grenade, sending out shrapnel.

Police also say that suspect James J. Lee fired his gun when he entered the lobby Wednesday. An overnight sweep of the building produced a number of items that were disrupted by the bomb squad, including two backpacks and two boxes. Lee was also seen during the standoff with what appeared to be a remote with an antenna in his hand, which concerned emergency responders. Lee also had on him batteries and two ski masks.

Around 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, the tactical unit that was outside the lobby heard what they believed to be a gun shot or some type of explosive, in addition to seeing Lee waving the gun and appearing to threaten a hostage. At that point they made the decision to go in and a member of the tactical entry team shot and killed Lee.

ORIGINAL STORY, SEPT. 1:

Corrections: An original version of this story said Lee had violated a stay-away order by returning yesterday; in fact, the stay-away order had expired. Also, police did not detonate the bombs last night. They “disrupted” them with quick blasts of water.

Employees of Discovery Communications hadn’t heard much from James J. Lee in the last two years. For a brief spell in early 2008, Lee was a fixture outside the company’s Silver Spring headquarters, leading a bizarre protest aimed at forcing the television giant to alter its programming. When his week-long spectacle ended in an arrest for disorderly conduct, Lee headed to a courthouse in Montgomery County as his own lawyer and quietly slipped out of the company’s consciousness.

When the 43-year-old finally returned today around 1 p.m., Lee came with a gun in his hand, a possible explosive device strapped to his body, and a list of demands that made sense only to himself. He walked into the company’s lobby brandishing his gun, starting a four-hour standoff full of fear and negotiations, with co-workers and loved ones hanging desperately on every update from police.

Lee never moved beyond the company’s lobby. He immediately took three people hostage — two of them Discovery Channel staffers, the third a security guard. Once it became clear something was amiss, the 1,900 employees either hunkered down in their offices or headed to the building’s side exits and out into the streets.

The building went into lockdown, the Montgomery County police arrived on the scene and cordoned off the area, and Discovery managers sent out an e-mail: “URGENT: Employees Should Go Home – Don’t Return to 1DP Until Further Notice. Employees at 1DP should go home for the remainder of the day. No employee should return to 1DP for any reason.” The roughly 100 children at Discovery Kids Place, the company’s day care center, were ushered by their teachers to a nearby McDonald’s.

Discovery staffers texted and e-mailed one another in a flurry of confusion. The situation was shocking and bizarre. There are plenty of government buildings around Washington to attract angry extremists, but who could hold a potentially violent grudge against Discovery?

“It took all of us by surprise,” says one employee, who was set to work at the office that evening. (Employees were instructed not to talk the press, which explains why staffers quoted in this story requested anonymity.) The company, she says, is quite good about keeping employees abreast of any controversy or demonstrations—-like earlier this year, when some people protested against Discovery’s plans for a reality show featuring Sarah Palin. There’d been nothing of the sort in recent weeks.

But the situation made a little more sense when the press aired a loose description of the perpetrator. “When I came in to talk to one of my supervisors, we had the TV on,” says another employee who works in a separate building. “There was a crawl at the bottom of the screen saying the suspect had been identified as an Asian male. We said, ‘That’s got to be the guy who was protesting a couple of years ago.’ And an hour or so later they confirmed it.” The employee says he hadn’t seen or thought of Lee in more than two years.

Lee had launched his one-man protest in 2008 because he believed the Discovery Channel wasn’t doing enough to save Earth. In January of that year, he went on an Internet discussion board and posted his plans for a “Save the Planet” protest outside company headquarters.

“The time for pussy-footing around the subject is done,” he wrote. “It’s time to protest [Discovery] until they start changing their stupid message. They ARE glorifying the damned fishermen who are overfishing the planet and I would think that you would see that for yourself instead of defending them. These people are harmful to the planet. Them and their glorifying of civilization and it’s machinery. All they are intested [sic] in is SELLING stuff.” Judging from his postings and MySpace page, Lee also harbored a strange infatuation with Daniel Quinn, the author of the novel Ishmael, and believed the Discovery Channel’s programming encouraged too much human procreation.

“His whole stance was that Discovery needed to be more action and less talk as far as conservation and wildlife go,” says an employee who witnessed the protests. “He felt Discovery was talking about this stuff and not doing anything. And he felt that [some shows] promoted populating the planet when there’s already too many people.” The employee says Lee had also been calling and e-mailing Discovery with pitches for shows. “They were rejected, as far as I know.”

Lee spent thousands of dollars advertising his protest in local papers like Washington Post Co.’s straphanger staple Express. Unable to find mainstream environmentalists to partner with, he apparently paid homeless people to join him. The protest devolved into a mob scene when Lee started throwing money in the air as part of a contest giveaway; a man who’d won $1,000 in $1 bills was beaten at a bus stop for the money. When he was arrested, Lee had about $21,000 in a duffel bag.

It’s unclear whether Lee had violated that order at any point during the two years it was in effect. Court documents confirm Lee’s probation ended on Aug. 18, 2010. At the time he stormed the building, his website contained a number of demands: He ordered that Discovery air programs based specifically on Quinn’s Ishmael; that the channel stop encouraging human birth through their programming; and that they find solutions to stopping immigration. Some of the elements on his website — particularly the screeds against overpopulation — were not a major part of his earlier protest platform in 2008, perhaps suggesting that his beliefs had become even more eccentric in the last two years.

Trained hostage negotiators were talking with Lee throughout the afternoon, apparently making little progress in resolving the situation. Employees at a separate building were locked down and unable to evacuate until around 4:30, when a supervisor sent out a tense email that read, “The police are going to allow pedestrians and vehicles to leave from 4:30 to 4:45 ONLY. All pedestrians should gather at the loading dock and wait for directions from the police escort. If you have a vehicle and you are on the parking lot – go to your vehicle immediately and wait for further directions. Do NOT move, just sit in your car and be ready to exit….We only have fifteen minutes to get everyone out of here…. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Police were observing Lee on the building’s closed-circuit camera system, and tactical officers had surrounded the building and could hear what Lee was saying. Around 4:48 p.m., police thought they saw Lee pointing his gun at one of the hostages. They decided to move in.

As police stormed the lobby, the hostages ran out. Lee was shot and killed. All three hostages emerged relatively unharmed, with two of the three declining to be examined by emergency responders. One of them was identified as Christopher Wood, a former marketing manager at the Washington Blade. Another was Discovery employee Jim McNulty.

In addition to bringing a handgun, Lee had apparently strapped explosives to his body and carried two boxes and two backpacks with him, according to Montgomery County police chief Tom Manger. As of 10:30 p.m., police had disrupted a device and were still working at the scene.

UPDATE 9:47 PM: ABC 7’s Brad Bell reports hearing three booms in the area of the Discovery Communications headquarters. The source of the booms could not immediately be confirmed, but would be consistent with explosive ordinance disposal team’s practice of ‘disrupting’ or neutralizing potentially explosive devices.

UPDATE 7:27 PM: The Washington Blade, citing multiple sources, reports one of its former staffers, Christopher Wood, was one of the hostages at the Discovery Channel.

UPDATE 6:44 PM: A woman who said she was acting as a family spokesman but declined to give her name confirmed that Jim McNulty, a Discovery employee, was among the three hostages.

“The only comment I can give you would be that Jim, who was (a) hostage, was able to talk to his wife briefly and confirm that he is OK,” she said.

TBD and ABC 7 News are working on getting an interview with McNulty. Check back for updates.

UPDATE 6:06 PM: A man who wanted the Discovery Channel to discourage human beings from reproducing walked into the company’s Silver Spring headquarters on Wednesday, reportedly fired a shot, and took three people hostage, Montgomery County police and sources said.

Four hours later, the gunman — identified by law enforcement sources as James Jay Lee — was dead, shot by a police tactical officer, according to Montgomery County police Chief Tom Manger.

During the four-hour standoff, as trained negotiators spoke with Lee, Montgomery County police tactical officers moved into position around the building. They were able to watch the gunman and listen to what he was saying, Manger said.

“At one point, the suspect, it was reported that he pulled out the handgun that he came in with, and pointed it at one of the hostages,” Manger said. “It’s unconfirmed now whether he actually fired the weapon or not, but at that point, our tactical units moved in. They shot the suspect. The suspect is deceased.”

Manger added that, “The hostages were all able to safely get out of the building.”

One hostage was a security guard; the other two were Discovery employees, Manger said. Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Chief Richie Bowers said all three hostages were being evaluated, but non appeared to be hurt.

Manger said the suspect had strapped what appeared to be explosive devices to his body, and also brought two boxes and two backpacks with him. Police suspected the objects may contain explosive devices, and were still working to safely remove them.

UPDATE 4:03: MoCo police are having a briefing, and said little except that they will have another update by 5 p.m. Police said some details “may affect how we’re treating this situation.”

UPDATE 3:41 P.M.: The St. Michael School at 824 Wayne Avenue has been placed on lockdown, ABC 7 News has confirmed.

MoCo POLICE UPDATE 3:20 p.m.: Montgomery County police chief Tom Manger said negotiations with the gunman are ongoing, and that there are a “small number of hostages” but an exact number had not been established. Manger said there had been no reports of injuries as of yet.

He also declined to say whether the gunman had made any demands.

“I’m not going to discuss the nature of our conservations with him,” Manger said.

As for reports that the gunman may have a bomb, Manger said, “We’re going with the assumption they could be explosive devices.”

Manger declined to identify the gunman publicly, saying police would have to meet with him face to face first. Sources have identified him as James Jay Lee.

Capt. Paul Starks said police would have another update before 4 p.m.

UPDATES ON SUSPECT: Lee was arrested outside the Discovery Channel headquarters on Feb. 21, 2008. The arrest was captured in a story by ABC 7 News. During his arrest, Lee listed a homeless shelter in Silver Spring as his address. A case manager at the shelter told TBD on Wednesday that they did not have a James Lee on file, but added that many people list them as an address.

UPDATE 2:52: Justice Department correspondent for NBC News, Pete Williams, confirms names of suspect as James Jay Lee, a longtime protester of Discovery. ABC News is also confirming. Here’s an old DCist post on Lee.

UPDATE 2:33 p.m. This was an e-mail sent to Discovery employees

Subject: URGENT: Employees Should Go Home – Don’t Return to 1DP Until Further Notice Employees at 1DP should go home for the remainder of the day. No employee should return to 1DP for any reason. Employees with cars at 1DP should not return to the office, but instead use an alternate mode of transportation.

The children from Discovery Kids Place are safe and with their teachers at the McDonald’s at the intersection of Colesville and Second Aves. Parents should meet their children there and go home for the remainder of the day.

UPDATE 2:25 All workers in building were evacuated. Many told to go home though they left personal items in the building.

UPDATE 2:21: Police are saying there is at least one hostage.

UPDATE 2:15 p.m. Angela Gates, a Metro spokeswoman, said the Silver Spring Metro station remains open, though the south entrance is closed. Buses that service the Silver Spring Transit Center are being detoured around closed streets, she said. Colesville Road is blocked off.

UPDATE: 2:02 p.m.: The Discovery Channel day care has been evacuated to the nearby McDonald’s. The day care had about 100 kids. They are reported to be safe.

UPDATE: 1:50 p.m.: According to Cpl. Dan Friz, a Montgomery County police spokesman, a tactical team is trying to get in touch with the gunman, who is being monitored on closed circuit TV.

The “tactical team has put together a plan for dealing with this individual,” Friz told ABC 7 News.

Friz was unable to confirm reports that multiple shots have been fired, but he said no shots had been fired by police as of 1:40 p.m.

Police were initially dispatched to the building for the report of shots fired at about 1 p.m. Police are reporting the suspect is an Asian male.

“Some sort of device on him that may be explosive in nature…” Friz said.

ORIGINAL

Montgomery County police have confirmed the Discovery Communications headquarters on Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring has been evacuated after the report of a man possibly with explosives inside the building.

A man entered the lobby and may have fired a weapon and declared, “Nobody is going anywhere,” Montgomery County police said.

In a phone interview on ABC 7 News and TBD TV, Discovery Communication employee Lisa Lucas said the building is in lockdown, with an unknown number of employees sheltering in offices. Police have established a cordon around the building.

She said that about 1:20 p.m., “we heard, Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.”

Police have not confirmed that multiple shots were fired.

Montgomery County police say the SWAT on scene; and the Emergency Response Team is en route.